Let's go sightseeing in Paris!

Day 3 in Paris finds us with no definite plan.....yet.  We knew that the possibility for rain existed in a day or two.....so we decided to try and get as much outdoor stuff as we could so that when it rained we could do inside stuff.

First stop......Arc de Triomph.

We hopped out of the subway and there it was. 

 At this location is where we had our first encounter with Paris scammers.  There was a whole group of gypsy girls that try to distract you with signing a petition and then pick pocket you.  We were prepared and didn't let ourselves become a victim.

 12 different streets intersect at this circle and there are no lines in the road. 

Interesting to watch all this crazy traffic here.

 Aren't I cute?

 This is why we take several pictures.  Paul demonstrating his expertise at snapping the picture at the precise moment that giant truck is in the background blocking the amazing shot!

 Got to take a selfie at this historic and famous landmark and to remind

ourselves that YES WE REALLY WERE IN PARIS!!!!

 

I won't post all the pictures we took here trying to get it right.....

but we did get an amazing picture:

We elected not to climb the Arc.....since it was about 284 steps up and the line was a little long. 

So we headed onto the next adventure which was to do the hop off-hop on double deck bus

 tour of the city. 

 

Paul decided to try and get himself with the Arc in a selfie from the top of the bus. 

Not a bad job, although would be better without his finger in it.....lol

Not exactly sure what we were trying to take with this picture......

There was plenty of beautiful things to snap pictures of

 The Louvre Museum......it's so big you can't take a picture of all of it at the same time.  We cruised by on the bus......but would definitely be visiting it sometime later in the week

 Notre Dame Church and Cathedral.  One of the most visited places in Paris

 So many beautiful bridges across the Seine River

 We hopped off the bus at the Musee de Orsay.  Another museum which was supposed to be

as great as the Louvre was.  It sits on the banks of the Seine River and was once a Train Station.    Our plan was to take a couple of hours and tour the museum and then hop

back on the bus again at the same point.

 

There goes our bus as we head towards the museum

Not sure why we took this picture and not sure which one of us took it.....guess we liked the guy in the green outfit??????

Well since this day is only half over.......we're going to stop it right here and pick it up again tomorrow in another post.  Don't want to overload you with all the beauty!

It's all about the tower & the end of Day 2 in Paris

Well the last time we were here......I had just shared pictures of the Versailles Palace trip and our visit with the McFarlands of Australia.

We decided to just get off the train from Versailles at some random stop and find someplace to eat.  All the neighborhoods have restaurants and it's fun to just walk around them, explore, and discover somewhere fun to eat.

Of course, we had no idea where we were in the city, but we found a nice café on a busy corner.  We got a great table and ate our first meal of the day (although it was around 5pm).  I got my spaghetti fix so that Paul didn't have to hear my request spaghetti for every meal (I love spaghetti and I especially love to eat spaghetti when we travel.  I have no idea why).

After the meal, we started walking to explore a little.  We entered a beautiful park filled with people and just happened to look to our right and this is what we found.......

What an amazing feeling to see this for the very first time in person

 Of course, we had to get several pictures to document the adventure

 That thing was so big that Paul had a hard time getting me in the picture :-)

 Of course we had to try the selfie shots.  You know how funny these can be.

 I think I was supposed to be in this picture!!!

 He needs a taller wife

 Yay.....he finally got me!

 

 Difficult to get in one shot.....it was so big and magnificent!

After leaving the Eiffel Tower we crossed a bridge over the Seine River.

Looked like a nice picture spot.

 Here's a tip:  always take several pictures to make sure you get that perfect shot

 

 You can see why!

 

 Love it though when I can find the perfect picture!

You never know when the husband is going to snap the shot!

 

This is how we ended the day......a couple of cold ones on a balcony in Paris!

Seriously......it really doesn't get much better than this.

However, while enjoying the beers we also had to figure out how to use this washer/dryer combo that had French buttons on it.  Google wasn't much help.  I never did get that thing working with the perfect settings the whole time we were there.  The other major problem was it was so tiny.  2 pairs of Paul's jeans and it was full.......so it took forever to get a load of wash done while we were there.  I was so disappointed...I thought this thing would be a great time saver.....NOT!

 

 

Tomorrow is only Day 3 in this magical city...................

Let's get back to Paris.....after a brief message

Made it back home safely after our last adventure.  Of course, we arrived home late afternoon on Thursday and I had to have payroll done for Friday.  Luckily, I prepared good before we left so it made the process a little easier this time around.

I'm excited to look at all the pictures we took from our St. Louis and Beyond trip, but I still need to get the rest of the Germany/Paris trip written before I forget what the heck we did.

But here's just a sampling of some of our recent road trip pictures:

 We ate a Chinese lunch the day before we left......this was a great fortune cookie for me!

 

 Visited the World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis

 How exciting to see the Arch for the first time

 Best way to start your vacation.....tour a brewery and sample lots of beer!

 What an amazing view we had from our casino hotel on that first night in St. Louis!

 Every road trip needs a field trip to a small town.  You never know what you'll find!

 

Don't think you need me to tell you what this picture is

 

 Heading South

 

Nashville by day is as much fun as Nashville by night

 A magnificent and historic Old Courthouse in St. Louis

 Looking at Illinois from the top of The Arch

 

Busch Stadium.....Home of the Cardinals....from the top of The Arch

 

Next entry in this life journal of mine will be the continuation of our

other grand trip.....please come back!

Time out for a short vacation

Well it looks like we'll be accumulating some more vacation pictures before I even get the last ones up here (in fact, I think I have about 3 or 4 vacations to still post.....oh well).

The husband has enough people so that we can get away again before everyone goes back to school and we don't get a day off for awhile. 

We really wanted to do a road trip.  We really wanted to visit 2 new Presidential Libraries/Museums, so we were plotting a trip to Dallas and Abilene, KS to visit the Bush Library and the Eisenhower Library.  Then our plans were going to take us east and hit St. Louis and Branson.  However, because we are just too darn far south.....this trip was going to take more days than we were going to take off.

So we had to scrap our plans and start over again.

The new plan?  Well it's really not much of a plan.  We know our starting point, we know our ending point, and we know a couple of places we're going to stop in between......but there is no timelines or deadlines......just hitting the open road and finding our adventures along the way.

Here's what we know for sure:

1.  Fly to St. Louis (we had airline miles to use.....so this part of the trip was cheap).  Renting a car in St. Louis and staying the night there.  We also have tickets to tour the Anheiser-Busch brewery (this should be fun).

2.  Get up on Sunday and head out on the highway.  We haven't decided if we should head towards Memphis or Nashville first......but those are two cities we'll be stopping in. 

3.  Be back in St. Louis on Wednesday night because our plane leaves on Thursday morning.

Everything else in between is question marks, but that's what makes it fun.

Oh and if you think we take too many vacations.......we're also taking our laptop so that we can have business meetings in the car as we drive.  Too many things need to be planned and discussed about PZ and what a perfect time to get it done.......when you've got miles and miles and miles of open road ahead of you.

Here's some more sneak peeks of our last trip to hold you over until I can get the rest of these pictures up here.

Visiting the Palace

Today's adventure was travelling to Versailles by train to visit the Palace of Versailles.  This palace was most famously occupied by one of those Louie's (either 14th or 15th).  It took us awhile to find the right train.....but once we were on it, we enjoyed the ride along the Seine River.  Total travel time was approximately 35-45 minutes.

We had bought our tickets online before we had left home, so we only had to wait in 1 line to get in.....one BIG LONG line, but we spent our time chatting with the mother and daughter behind us who were from Indiana and were traveling Europe together for about 3 weeks.  How fun!

 This was outside the front of the palace.  Just a small little place!

 Getting closer to the entrance

 This was the organ inside the private cathedral inside the palace. 

The organ pipes were 2 stories tall

 

 The Hall of Mirrors (because of all the chandeliers).  Very fancy

 A statue in one of the bedrooms.  Hard to get pictures in there due to the amount of people.....crazy!!

Interesting story happened between when the picture above and the picture below were taken.  We were walking out of the palace and made a casual remark to the people behind us and we started a conversation with them.  We spent about 30 minutes at this spot talking with them and found them to be extremely interesting and friendly.

They were from Magnetic Island, Australia and were on a 5 month trip doing house swaps.  We discussed the fact that we were going to be heading out because we hadn't eaten lunch and they promptly offered us some snack/energy bars to hold us over so that we could tour the Marie Antoinette Estate with them.

 The back of the palace

 The water in the distance was half the way to Marie Antoinette's Estate, probably close to 1 mile.  We walked along with our new friends and talked the entire way.  We enjoyed sharing our tales of past and future journies.

 As we finished our tour and were walking back towards the palace, we had the opportunity to walk along this beautiful tree lined path.  Hardly took any pictures, because we were still visiting with our friends.

As we got to the end of the palace tour.....we decided for the 4 of us to head to a close by pub and enjoy wine, beer, and some more interesting conversation.  We ended up sitting there with them for about an hour and a half and then found out they were riding the same train back to Paris as we were.  We started the 30 minute slow walk back to the train station talking the whole way.  We exchanged our e-mail addresses with the promise to keep in touch with each other and try to visit each other's home towns.  We got separated in the train station due to a problem with our pre-paid tickets not being in the right zone, so we had a delay while we got our return ticket to Paris.  Unfortuntately we didn't get to enjoy their company on the train ride back to Paris.  What an interesting couple they were.

In fact, since we have been home we have already exchanged e-mail with them.  They are currently visiting Madeira Island (which is off the coast of Portugal and Morocco).  They promise a more detailed e-mail once they move to their next location and better Wi-Fi.

We'll pick up the rest of the evening when we get off the train in Paris!